By Rebecca Kheel – 02/25/16 04:10 PM EST The era of trying to work with Russia is over, the top U.S. commander in Europe said Thursday while arguing for the rebuilding of U.S. forces in that region. “Russia does not want to challenge the agreed rules of the international order,” Gen. Philip Breedlove told the House Armed Services Committee. “It wants to rewrite them.” Breedlove was on Capitol Hill defending the Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2017, which includes a fourfold increase in funding for the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) to deter an aggressive Russia.The increase would bring the initiative’s funding to $3.4 billion. Rep….

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert released a video statement insisting on his innocence on Monday, before arriving at prison in a motorcade to begin a 19-month sentence for corruption. Olmert is the first former head of government in Israel to go to prison. During his premiership from 2006 to 2009, he was internationally credited with working toward a peace accord with the Palestinians, until graft scandals forced him to step down. “As prime minister I was charged with the highest responsibility of safeguarding Israel’s citizens. Today I am the one to be locked behind bars,” he said in a…

February 12, 2016 A former employee at Palm Beach International Airport was arrested Wednesday for funneling more than $1,000 from SunPass customers’ accounts into her own bank account, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office reports. Catrina Denise Normil, 28, faces charges of grand theft and fraud. The West Palm Beach resident worked as a manager at PBIA’s parking facility until the first week of February, according to the arrest report. SunPass customers noticed their accounts were being charged twice for amounts of more than $100 after leaving the airport. An early January audit revealed that between October and January, Normil…

Fifty-six years ago, a young schoolteacher went to church during Holy Week and never came home. The next day, a few of her possessions were found scattered along the road outside the local Sacred Heart Church, as Texas Monthly recounted. One high-heeled shoe, a patent-leather handbag, a piece of crumpled white lace. The following week, her body was found, fully dressed and badly bruised, retrieved from a canal in which someone had left her to decompose, her corpse washed clean of evidence. An autopsy found that she had been raped while comatose. This was Irene Garza, a 25-year-old, dark-haired belle of…

Anthony Graves spent 18 years in jail, 16 of them on death row, for a crime he didn’t commit. Prosecutor Charles Sebesta obtained a conviction despite a lack of physical evidence. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images A Texas legal disciplinary board upheld a decision to disbar a prosecutor who oversaw a case that sent an innocent man to death row. The board on Monday affirmed an earlier decision that found Charles Sebesta extracted false confessions and withheld testimony to convict Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years in prison before he was exonerated. The Texas supreme court-appointed board of disciplinary appeals said Sebesta’s behavior in…

By Sarah Ferris and Jordan Fabian – 02/09/16 11:00 AM EST President Obama on Tuesday unveiled the last budget of his presidency, a $4.1 trillion plan that reflects his desire to set the agenda for his final months in office and beyond. The proposal, Obama’s costliest to date, includes a litany of long-shot progressive ideas that have little chance of becoming law in the Republican-controlled Congress. Leaders of the House and Senate budget panels have already said they will not even give the document a hearing. Obama’s final budget is also a political document unveiled on the same day as the New Hampshire primary. The…

From 2007 into 2009, Evgeny Primakov and I chaired a group composed of retired senior ministers, high officials and military leaders from Russia and the United States, including some of you present here today. Its purpose was to ease the adversarial aspects of the U.S.-Russian relationship and to consider opportunities for cooperative approaches. In America, it was described as a Track II group, which meant it was bipartisan and encouraged by the White House to explore but not negotiate on its behalf. We alternated meetings in each other’s country. President Putin received the group in Moscow in 2007, and President…

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, now under the ownership of billionaire casino mogul and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, has endorsed senator Marco Rubio in the presidential race. The high-profile endorsement comes after months of speculation surrounding Adelson’s initially secretive purchase of Nevada’s largest newspaper, with the news organization’s own staff forced to investigate the identity of their new boss. The endorsement published Friday afternoon includes a prominent disclaimer distancing Adelson from the decision: “The RJ met with Sen. Rubio on Oct. 9, two months before the announcement of the newspaper’s sale to the family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. The Adelsons…

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday night accused President Obama of apologizing to Muslims as he focused on religious themes at a campaign rally in Florence, S.C. Trump touted his controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. in the wake of recent terrorist attacks, and referenced the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “And then President Obama yesterday goes to a mosque and he apologizes,” he said to audible boos. “I mean, what’s going on?” The billionaire businessman said he believes Christianity is “under siege,” arguing that churches could consolidate its power on political issues but are “afraid to…

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders leads rival Hillary Clinton by 20 points in New Hampshire, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street/Marist poll released Thursday. In the poll — conducted entirely after the Iowa caucuses that Clinton won by a razor-thin margin — Sanders receives 58 percent support from likely Democratic primary voters. Clinton gets 38 percent support. The same poll conducted last week showed similar numbers, with Sanders receiving 57 percent and Clinton 38 percent. The Vermont senator has huge leads with young people and independents, the poll found. Among independents, he garners 69 percent to Clinton’s 26 percent. And with…